The Betrothed Sister (19 page)

‘Have you ever seen Prince Vladimir, Katya?' she asked.

‘Only once. My father works for his father. He carries messages. He watches for him.'

‘And …?'

‘Are you asking me about my father or Prince Vladimir?'

‘Well, the prince. Is he heroic? Is he kind? Is he as handsome as they say?'

‘I really cannot tell, my lady. He is a warrior and his father worships him though his father is recently married again. The prince's mother died. His father may have other sons.'

‘He has never written me a letter.'

‘It is not our way. He cannot even see your face before you are married.'

Thea could not believe that Vladimir's uncle, the ruler of Kiev, had had to flee his kingdom, but worse, she was saddened that Katya's betrothed had been murdered during the rebellion.

Hearing footsteps, all three looked towards the doorway as Padar entered the room, pushing awkwardly though a blue-and-crimson door tapestry. He carried a new harp with him.

It was time for Thea's music lesson.

‘An ancient lyre, very like the harp you have been practising. Your first lesson will be today, Lady Thea. Besides I have news for you.'

‘Go and fetch my seamstresses some refreshment,' she said to Gudrun who had flushed crimson. Katya, too, was staring at Padar with interest in her eyes. ‘You too, Katya, my dear.' Thea gestured towards the end of the long chamber. ‘Just look how my sewing women are busy around the hearth working on my wedding garments. They are hungry.'

After the girls had slipped through the same curtain that Padar had entered by, Thea said, ‘What news, Padar?'

‘In a moment.' Padar pushed the codex that Thea had been using for her lesson aside. He placed a kinnor, a wonderful lyre from the East, on the table. ‘I brought it back from Novgorod in the spring. It is just like the harp of King David.'

Thea reached out and plucked the strings. The instrument was in tune. She longed to play it. ‘Padar, what is your news?'

He lowered his voice. ‘It is both good and bad but more bad than good. The English North rose up. King Sweyn's warriors burned down the castle at York. They took York, my lady. That was good.'

‘The Aetheling will be king, not my brother, and that is not good.'

‘The bad news is that King Sweyn made a truce with King William. The Bastard paid him to leave York. The Aetheling fled back to the Scots.' He paused as the wall candle above him spluttered. ‘The other bad news is that Godwin attacked Exeter and failed. He has returned to Ireland, tail fallen.'

Two days after her betrothal feast, Edmund had sailed back to Ireland. ‘And Edmund? What news of him?'

‘Edmund will join Godwin.'

‘And you, Padar? Will you go to Godwin?'

‘No, my lady, I shall sail with you to Novgorod next summer. I wish to settle down. I may trade in the Russian lands.'

‘Tell me more.' She was thinking of Gudrun.

‘The earl, that is Earl Connor, and I intend to join in an enterprise. I shall become his agent in the Rus lands. I learned their language last winter; not a great deal of it, but enough to stop translators cheating me.'

‘Perhaps you should take lessons from Katya.'

‘I think not, my lady. It might encourage her.'

‘Encourage her?'

‘Those dark eyes follow me. She smiles at me at supper and she steps into my path around the courtyards. She becomes bold.'

‘Nonsense, she is, in truth grieving for a lost love. You would choose another, Padar?'

‘If she would have me. I have nothing to offer a wife.'

‘Padar, if it is Gudrun you speak of, she will take you and with my blessing.'

Padar appeared startled. ‘She likes me?'

‘I believe if you asked for her she would be very happy.'

‘Thank you, my lady.' Padar bowed from the waist.

The curtain moved. Her maids had returned. She glanced over at the door. Gudrun held the tapestry curtain aside for Katya, who carried a laden wooden tray. Observing how Gudrun turned at the first wooden pillar to peer back at Padar, she said quietly into his ear, ‘You do have my blessing. Soon we shall travel to Novgorod and both you and Gudrun will be part of my household.'

Padar's countenance was so joyful, looking at his happiness took away the melancholy she felt for her brothers' failed attempts to recover a kingdom.

‘When the time is right, I shall marry her, my lady.'

‘Do not leave it too long, Padar. Now, show me this instrument. I wonder if I can make Solomon's harp sing songs of joy.'

That evening, Thea fell on her knees on the chapel's stone flagged floor. She prayed to St Theodosia for Godwin, then Edmund. She prayed for the Atheling who had fled through woods and mountains back to Scotland, bitterly disappointed at Sweyn's double dealing. Her prayers turned towards little Ulf and to her mother and to Grandmother Gytha.

The cunning woman's words floated in and out of her mind as she whispered her prayers and counted them off, clacking a simple ring of stones that hung from her belt. The past was past and though it still caused a deep ache in her breast, she felt at peace because it would be God's will that William of Normandy would reap punishment for the evil he had sown. And Lady Ragnar, who saw far into the future on water as still as a clear night sky, had said, ‘In time, King William will suffer for his crimes.'

14

Russia, April 1070

On a late spring day, filled with the scent of lilac, Thea's retinue – her guards, their horses, and wagons – clip-clopped and rumbled their way through the streets of Novgorod. Her white mount, an Arab horse with a plaited mane and a proud stance, was a gift from the ambassadors who had met her party at Lagoda. His name was Starlight. She loved him from the first moment she met him and he had nuzzled her hand. Padar and Earl Connor trotted to either side of her on their sturdy destriers. Rus guards rode behind with two Russian ambassadors.

Thea occasionally glanced back to reassure herself that the wagons with her maids and wedding goods, including her beautiful palanquin, followed close behind. She could see the wagons' curved covers rise above a host of armed men in conical hats. The Godwin dragon pennant, her father's fighting man and her mother's swan banner, fluttered from the palanquin where Gudrun and Katya sat behind a servant who occasionally flicked a light whip at the horses pulling their carriage. Her family's silk banner depicting the dragon of Wessex was carried by a page that walked before her horse and led her cavalcade into the city. She felt today that she really was a princess.

Katya had instructed Thea that she should be veiled as she entered Novgorod. If her husband could not see his bride's face before their wedding, then his people should not see her face either. Thea could feel the spring breeze lift the delicate silk to fan her face. Her loose linen gown fell to either side of Starlight's flanks and her matching blue woollen mantle lay elegantly over his rump. She knew she looked well and she did not care if the Rus ambassadors gave her disapproving glances when they caught glimpses of her hair. She asked Earl Connor if Vladimir would be waiting for her at the fortress.

‘My lady, unless a magician can whisk him to you with a twitch of his wand he will not be here. His stepmother and her court will greet you and make you welcome until the prince and his father can leave Kiev and fetch you south. Sadly, Kiev remains a dangerous city. Since the prince's uncle has returned from exile and reclaimed his kingdom, his two brothers have come from their cities to support him, but the tribes are still a danger to the city's security. It will not be safe for you to travel south. Nor will your prince come north for some time.'

Thea felt disappointment. ‘So I am to be like a prisoner here.'

‘There will be much to occupy you, Thea, and you will soon get to know the royal ladies in Princess Anya's retinue.'

‘I see.' Thea turned away. She did not want the royal ladies, she wanted her betrothed. She wanted him to greet her wearing a mantle trimmed with ermine, with his glossy black hair falling onto his shoulders and his soft brown eyes only for her.

Earl Connor led the procession into Novgorod's main square where merchants and peasants alike stopped to stare at the English princess as she passed through the lower city. A peasant woman threw flowers at Thea, crying out, ‘Welcome, Princess of the English.' Padar caught the straw-wrapped posy and handed it to Thea. She dipped her nose into the pleasantly scented little red roses, lifted her face and smiled back at the woman who had tossed it to her. ‘Speciba,' she called back in the Russian language. ‘Thank you.' She held onto the posy with one hand as she rode on, its pleasant scent lessening the fishy odours of the street that mingled with the stink of cattle dung, horse and human sweat. When a second posy was thrown Padar picked it up and offered it to Thea. She took it and then found holding her reins and the posies awkward. Starlight side-stepped and she almost dropped her flowers as she tugged the reins to control him. Padar leaned towards her and said, ‘May I, my lady, give this to …'

‘Gudrun. Of course, take it to her.'

Without hesitation he trotted back to the palanquin where Gudrun sat with Katya. Thea smiled to herself.

Once they had passed through the large town square Connor resumed his conversation. ‘The people seem to welcome you, Lady Thea. And you will have time to adjust, become familiar with the ways of the Rus and, my lady, Novgorod in summer is a pleasant city. It has become my home of late.' He turned his laughing blue eyes towards her. ‘As I am a merchant trader, I am often here.'

‘And no wife, Earl Connor, not yet?'

‘No wife, Lady Thea. That hope died two years ago, as you must know.' She felt him searching her face. She did know.

‘Yes. I would have welcomed you as a stepfather.'

‘Thank you, my lady.'

Thea had been delighted when she discovered that Earl Connor was to be part of her escort to Novgorod, just as she had felt sad when her mother, Elditha, declined his suit two years before and had instead retreated into a nunnery in Canterbury. If she could not have her father, Earl Connor would have become a very acceptable substitute. ‘My lord, will you reside here again this summer?' she asked, departing from a difficult subject. All she had left of her mother's life was secured in her travelling bag – the Godwin christening gown and a little book of riddles, her swan necklace, and a portion of the precious healing mugwort root. She wondered if she wrote a letter would her mother ever receive it? Perhaps a Rus messenger would be permitted to deliver a letter to Elditha.

Did her mother know about her betrothal yet? Would anyone tell her?

Their horses turned onto an incline. Earl Connor was saying, ‘I shall not remain here long. It is the sailing season. Look.' He pointed up to a tall keep surrounded by whitewashed walls and turreted towers. It dominated the strange tall-roofed wooden city below.

She gasped at its splendour.

‘You may well be impressed. For all its beauty it is a fortress. You are safe behind its walls. It is impregnable.'

‘So everyone tells me.' Thea could not resist a shudder as she looked at the kremlin, as this keep was called. As their cavalcade approached the gate, she fancied for a moment that once she was shut inside it she might never ride out again. She patted Starlight's mane. ‘You, too, Starlight. You feel it also.' Her horse snorted. She leaned down and whispered, ‘I shall never be shut away!'

Padar, who had caught them up again, glanced at her with concern in his eyes. ‘It looks more austere than it actually is, Lady Thea. The chambers within are comfortable and the terem ladies do have their own garden, I hear.'

As if a garden was any consolation for incarceration. This splendid castle did not resemble King Sweyn's manor or his large sprawling house in Roskilde, nor did it resemble the palaces she had known in England with their open gates and the beautiful wooden halls of her childhood. She determined not to allow memories to possess her spirit. Soon she would marry her prince, and it was for him that she had crossed the wild Northern sea road and had ridden through mysterious and haunting, dark forests to Novgorod.

The temporary governor and a noblewoman called Lady Olga had welcomed Thea in fluent English. Lady Olga explained that Thea's mother-in-law to be, Princess Anya, was about to give birth to her first child. ‘The princess is in Novgorod for her safety. Prince Vsevolod's home on the Steppes south of Kiev, holds many dangers these days,' she said as servants presented Thea with a sweet cherry drink, savoury pastries and delicate little honey cakes.

‘I hope I meet her soon,' Thea said in halting Russian.

‘Indeed, when the princess is purified and everything in her chamber has gone through the ritual, you may meet her.'

Thea was confused and determined to ask Katya later why the princess had to be purified. She did not like to show her ignorance to the tall, thin, severe-looking Lady Olga.

Soon after her welcome, Lady Olga led Thea away to her new chamber in the terem tower where a bath was prepared and a long rest was promised. After her three-week long journey by sea and forest roads, Thea felt grateful.

Olga escorted Thea through long, sconce-lit corridors to the guarded Terem Tower.

Thea tried to make conversation, to find out why she could not meet the princess now. ‘It is customary in Denmark and in England for the ladies to assist at a birth. Is it so in Russia?'

‘Midwives will look after the princess.'

‘I see. When is the birth expected?'

‘Within the month. She is very large. The summer heat is exhausting for her now.'

‘My mother had six children who survived. One of us is a prisoner in Normandy and he is only nine years old. My brother Magnus was killed in a battle nearly two years ago.'

‘I am sorry,' Lady Olga said. Thea noticed that by her casual tone Lady Olga did not really mean it. Lady Olga did not know her brothers, so how could she understand Thea's loss?